


Hidden Behind Straightened Hair

by auroraphilealis (xrosepetalsx)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 2012, Bisexuality, Bisexuality erasure, Five Times and One, Fluff and Angst, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 17:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9453074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xrosepetalsx/pseuds/auroraphilealis
Summary: The fives times Dan’s hair was used as a joke to hide his insecurity about his sexuality, and the one time it wasn’t.Includes: Homophobia, Bi-Erasure, 2012 Scenario’s, Curly hair/Straight jokes





	

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thank you to @ineverhadmyinternetphase for quite literally letting me force her to read over my shoulder the entire time I worked on this, and her endless support of both my take on 2012 events, and bi-erasure.
> 
> Honestly guys, this is the thing I am currently the most proud of ever having written, so please let me know what you think <3 I’m literally shaking as I post this. 

 

 

It all starts back in 2008, just before Dan graduates and starts his gap year. He’s with a group of friends in the middle of the courtyard, all acting like a bunch of drama geeks because Dan just got the lead in the new school play, while Dan sits and smirks at a girl he’s fancied far longer than he can remember.

“Who you looking at, mate?” a guy called Roger asks, squinting in the same general direction as Dan. Instantly, Dan stop’s looking, even though the girl had been making eyes at him back, and turns to his friends.

“No one. The girl whose gonna play Lady Macbeth. Trying to see if we’ve got any chemistry.”

Of course Dan hadn’t been staring at the female lead, why would he? Her name was Becca or something or other, and she always had this nasty scowl on her face that made Dan want to punch her in the face. She’d make the perfect Lady Macbeth, but working with her wasn’t going to come easy.

Dan’s friends snort and dissolve into laughter at the very idea of it, and at first, Dan smirks too. It’s more than obvious that most of his mate’s don’t particularly like Becca any more than Dan does, after all.

“What’s so funny?” he asks anyway, because they’re all staring at him funny and he kind of doesn’t like it. It’s starting to get under his skin with how _knowing_ it is. Dan’s eyes narrow, because he has no idea what his friends supposedly _know._

“It’s just,” Laruine starts from his left, catching Dan’s attention. He turns narrowed eyes onto her, fingers fidgeting with the pockets of his jeans.

“Just what?” he demands when she fails to continue because she’s laughing again.

Laurine shakes her head, and her boyfriend, Charles, picks up for her with a smirk of his own.

This one makes Dan even more uncomfortable.

“Mate, how you gonna have any chemistry with _her_?” he asks, and relief courses through Dan. It wasn’t a joke at his expense, then, they’re just saying what’s on Dan’s mind. He’s never going to get along with Becca, sad thing as she was. Dan’s lips curl up in a smile of his own, and he start’s laughing as well again.

“Reckon you’re right,” he agreed with a little wink, because he’s got a problem and he doesn’t know how to stop it.

The other’s snort and continue to laugh, but it isn’t until James pipes up that Dan’s heart stops again.

“Cause you’re about as straight as your hair, aren’t you Dan?”

**

The next time it happens, it’s 2009 and Dan’s long since stopped talking to the people he used to associate with. They’ve all got new lives off in Uni now, and Dan’s still just Dan, back at home, taking a gap year

The only real thing he’s got going for him is this guy he met over the internet; AmazingPhil.

He’s the best friend Dan’s ever had, but the most terrifying thing of all, is that Dan’s _attracted_ to him.

A year ago, he never would have been able to admit that to himself. In fact, a year ago, he’d denied vehemently his friends claims that he was anything _but_ straight, finally working up the courage to ask out that girl he’d fancied and dating her for the majority of their final year.

Every time his friends tried to joke about his sexuality, Dan would get angry and defensive, snapping at them with not-so-subtle reminders that he had a _girlfriend_ thank you very much, and it wasn’t _his_ fault they were all up-tight virgins who couldn’t get a girl to fuck them, too.

Most of the time, his friends just shrugged off the comments, backing off for a few days before they joked again, and Dan did his best to pretend it didn’t bother him (spoiler alert, it did.)

It all came to a head back stage during the final run of the play.

There had been a boy, a cute one at that, who Dan had been chatting with quite a lot. There were long scenes that didn’t require Dan on stage, and the two had gotten to talking.

Dan, of course, never would have admitted it to himself, let alone anyone else, that he thought the boy was cute. That didn’t stop him from looking though, didn’t stop him from blushing a deep, dark red and looking furiously away every time he caught himself. That didn’t stop him from _wanting_ and being scared to death every time his eyes slid over pale pink lips that were nothing like the cherry red of his girlfriends.

He had these really beautiful brown eyes as well, nothing like Dan’s, and chestnut hair that fell in beautiful ringlets across his face. This boy was not afraid to just be who he was, and while Dan denied their friendship anywhere _but_ backstage for the two weeks the play ran Friday through Sunday, he had the most fun of his life.

Right up until Rico tried to kiss him, of course – or, well, right up until Rico _did_ kiss him, and Dan kissed him back with all the passion of a very confused, horny teenage boy who’d never once found himself feeling like this towards a boy.

It had been a good kiss. Even now, when Dan thinks back on it, he can remember the way it had made him weak at the knees, made his stomach lurch until he was reaching up to grip at the boy’s hips with hands that were shaking with desire and _want_.

The queue for his line had come up, and Dan had ripped himself away from Rico, eyes wild with terror and distress.

The play was a mess, and afterwards, when Rico tried to talk to him, Dan roughly pushed him away with a shout of “Get away from me you queer!” that would prove to cause Rico far more pain than Dan had ever intended it too.

When he looks back on it now, Dan kind of hates himself, but he also kind of hates himself because he’s got this dual attraction to two different genders and he doesn’t know what to do with it. No one believes he’s real – not that he’s ever actually said it _aloud_ , but he’s read enough online to know that he’s not valid.

And it hurts.

So Dan’s scared, because he’s got this crush on AmazingPhil, the best person he’s ever known, and they’ve been flirting, like _actually_ flirting, and Dan want’s so bad that he could burst. It’s just, other than Rico, he’s never really admitted to being attracted to another guy before, and the last thing he wants to do it destroy his friendship with Phil.

The last thing he wants to do is _lose_ Phil, even if they have been sending each other rather risqué pictures over dailybooth and snapchat, even if Dan _is_ pretty sure that Phil, at the very least, likes him too.

It happens when they’re on Skype; The Conversation. The inside joke.

Phil’s making bedroom eyes at him. He’s got his laptop propped up on his lap, and he’s sitting leaned back against his bed, green and blue and purple jigsaw duvet pulled up over his lap. His hair is mussed and messy, like he’s just had a proper fuck, and his eyes – God, those eyes. Dan could get lost in those eyes, especially when they’re looking at him like _that_ , all sultry and desperate, a little smirk quirking the corner of his lips.

“I didn’t know you’re hair wasn’t naturally straight,” Phil says, and it’s like he thinks it’s the biggest turn on in the world with the way he licks his lips afterward. The look in his eye is gleaming, hungry. Dan can do nothing but swallow thickly, already able to feel himself getting hard in his shorts.

He can’t imagine why Phil finds his curly hair attractive when he’d been hoping Phil would overlook it for the sight of Dan all wet and freshly showered, but how is he going to complain? This is probably the dirtiest they’ve ever gotten where they could both physically see each other’s immediate reactions, and Dan… want’s more.

So Dan doesn’t stop it when the borrowed joke slips past his lips, saying, not in so many words, something he’s had a hard enough time admitting to himself.

“Yeah, my hairs about as straight as myself.”

**

They’ve only been dating a total of two years when it happens – the near destruction of everything they know.

It’s no secret that Phil views his privacy as very important. They’ve had discussions before, fights even, that had eventually been resolved with Dan coming to the understanding that Phil wasn’t ashamed of him at all. It was just, with the life they led, it was difficult to have anything that was just _theirs_ , and Phil very much so wanted their relationship to just be theirs.

There was enough speculation surrounding them as it was anyway, enough little hints and subtle nods to their audience to let them know that each of them was taken, that neither male deemed it necessary that they come right out and say it.

It helps that when Dan and Phil first got together, Dan still wasn’t entirely secure in his sexuality, playing around with the word “bi” and trying to allow Phil prove to him that he was every bit as valid as the people who were just gay or straight.

It was just easier to sweep their entire relationship under the rug after that rather than having to deal with hateful comments and misunderstandings that would have come had Dan been open about his relationship with Phil. Dan and Phil had both agreed that avoiding comments about them being _gay_ when neither male identified as such, would have done nothing but hurt their relationship.

Unfortunately, neither male every anticipated the sudden increase in their popularity, never anticipated the serious lack of respect that came with new fans digging into their pasts and dredging up posts they’d never had to worry about before.

It all comes to a head when a video Phil had made for Dan _in private_ before they lived together is leaked due to a YouTube glitch in late 2011.

The break downs are… spectacular.

Dan is angry, because his boyfriend is broken, sat with his face in his hands on the sofa across from Dan, unwilling to so much as touch him. It hurts, more than Dan can say, but he knows it’s not because Phil is ashamed of him – no, they’ve long since gotten past that blip in their relationship. It hurt’s because Dan had never thought that YouTube would fuck up so bad that the video Dan treasures would be exposed, and with it, everything that Phil holds dear.

Dan is everything to him, Dan knows that much. There is no one in the world who could convince him otherwise.

This leak of their personal life, though, that’s like a javelin to Phil. It feels like the death of something, because he’s always been afraid if their relationship were put under the strain of the public eye, it would all crumple apart.

So Dan does the only thing he can think of. He put’s Phil to the task of taking it down, and when he finds out that the video is being reposted, he politely messages the owners with half-assed, curt excuses with the request that they take it down.

Everything goes back to normal, until it doesn’t, and in 2012, it happens again.

This time, Phil doesn’t speak to Dan for a week. He shuts down completely, and it destroys Dan, who wants nothing more than to reassure his boyfriend that nothing is going to tear them apart. It doesn’t matter if their fans, thousands of them as there are now, know that they’re together, because they can never destroy the thing that Dan and Phil have worked so hard to build.

Phil isn’t capable of listening right now, though, so Dan does the next best thing, and he takes to the internet, opening up an entirely new tumblr called “Dan’s Complaint Blog” where he goes on spectacular rants about how anyone could truly believe that he and his best friend have hot bum sex under the stars every night.

That’s when it happens again.

Phil’s heartbroken, Dan knows that much. Phil doesn’t mean the harsh things he says in the middle of the night when he isn’t furiously attempting to copywrite claim every single copy of _the video_.

Phil isn’t like this. Phil is a bull in a china shop, okay sure, but he isn’t _cruel_ in any sense of the word, so when he starts to attack Dan because he has no other outlet for the pain he’s feeling inside, Dan just kind of lets him, because he knows that unlike him, his boyfriend doesn’t have any other outlet but to say these things to him.

It’s during one of Dan’s little tirades, tried and true and recently posted on tumblr, that Phil comes into Dan’s room and just kind of sits with him.

“You’re rather defensive about being straight for a guy who goes to bed with me every night,” Phil snorts, mouth turned down into harsh lines, and eyes anywhere _but_ on Dan.

It hurts him, because Dan can hear the insecurity there, and he wants to make it better. So, gently, because Phil is like a skittish cat these days, Dan puts his hand on his shoulder and squeezes.

“I never said I was straight, Phil. I just said I wasn’t gay.”

“Isn’t that the same thing!” Phil bursts out with, because he does that these days. He’s so tightly coiled and screwed up with paranoia that he bursts from the simplest of things, and Dan just wants to make it better.

He bites his lip, because that actually kind of hurt, if he’s honest, and just squeezes Phil’s shoulder tighter instead.

“You know that’s not true,” he says. “You know that, Phil. Isn’t that why we’re in this mess in the first place? Because neither one of us wanted to give anyone the power to shove us into a neat little box like that? I’m not lying when I say I’m not gay, and you know that. I’m not lying, I’m just curving the truth to protect _you_ , Phil, because I know that’s what you need.”

Dan’s voice wobbles dangerously. There’s a well of emotion threatening to overwhelm him that he’s been holding back for ages, now, but he has to stay strong. He has to stay strong, and angry, and defensive for Phil’s sake, so that they can both get through this is one piece.

Beside him, Phil just kind of slumps into himself, nodding miserably. For the first time in weeks, he isn’t blowing up on Dan, and for that, Dan is grateful.

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry,” he says. The tears are clogging his throat, that much is obvious. Dan can hear them. This is the first time Phil’s actually cried about the entire situation, rather than just snapping at Dan every time he tries to so much as bring any of this up.

Hating the sound of his boyfriend crying, Dan tries a different tact, and he reaches for Phil’s chin as delicately as he can manage. Dan’s always been the softer of the two.

His fingers push Phil’s face up until Phil turns and looks at him, and then Dan offers him a tentative smile.

“I’m about as straight as my hair, remember?” he asks, proud when that earns him a laugh.

It’s a wet one, but it’s the first of many, and when Phil finally allows himself to proper break down in Dan’s arms, Dan knows they’re on their way to being alright.

**

It becomes a thing, after that – just between the two of them for the most part. It’s a coping mechanism, a way to make them both feel better about everything that’s been happening, a way to reassure each other that coming out and slapping a label on themselves is nothing more than detrimental. Dan tells himself he does it for Phil, continues to use the now old joke that his hair doesn’t want to be any more straight than he does to cheer his boyfriend up, but after a while… he realizes that it’s for him as well.

Dan isn’t as secure in his sexuality as he’s always thought he was, and in 2014, his fear’s come back again at a family reunion he’s forced to attend without his long term boyfriend because Phil is on vacation with his own family at the time.

Everything is going swimmingly. Most of his aunts and uncles don’t bother to question his lack of a partner at the event, but a cousin who he used to be rather close to _does_ , and it’s rather irritating to Dan less because he doesn’t feel like he can talk about Phil, and more because he’s being spoken about as if he _has_ to label himself.

The idea of labels has always made his stomach turn. Even googling about liking two genders had been a huge step for him, back in early 2009 long before he met Phil. Now, though, now he’s stuck staring down an obnoxious, drunk adult who thinks it’s funny to talk about Dan like he’s not even there.

“Always assumed he was queer, ya’know? Prancing ‘bout with all those girls on his arm. Never once saw him sneakin’ away with ‘em, though. Always struck me as weird,” he muses, muscles bulging in the stupid white tank he chose to wear, far less respectable than Dan’s own dress shirt.

He rolls his eyes, and tries not to let the guys words get to him.

“When we was fourteen, I caught him checkin’ out one of me friends, ya’know? But it wasn’t a girl, see, and that’s what got me thinkin’. Danny boy here just ain’t straight, amiright?” Kelvan bursts into laughter at that, throwing up his hands and the beer can in them with him, the empty aluminum crushing against the asphalt behind him.

Dan winces at the sound – the can, the laughter, the _words_. They hurt, and he doesn’t want to hear them.

“He’s gay! I’m tellin yall, Daniel’s gay!”

“I’m not gay!” he exclaims, standing on trembling limbs and glaring down at this _boy_ who thinks he can say anything about Dan from a few observations a few years ago. The fact that he thinks Dan being too polite to sneak off and screw a girl makes him _gay_ isn’t helping, nor does what he says next.

“Then where’s your girlfriend, Danny boy? I dun see you with anyone today?”

Dan balls his hands into fists, and chooses not to respond, because there’s nothing he can say that can change this guy’s mind, and it’s not like anyone’s listening to him anyway. It’s just – it’s just the idea of someone telling him that he has to be either gay _or_ straight that bothers him, and he’d thought he’d come a long way from thinking that anyone telling him that was _right_.

His cousins words ring in his ears, though, this constant dribble of “ _never seen him with a girl like that before, ya’know what I mean?_ ” that makes Dan question himself even though he doesn’t want too. _He_ knows he’s been with girls like that before, and _he_ knows wanting dick just as much as he wants pussy doesn’t make him a freak. He’s valid, and real, and he doesn’t have to _pick_ , but… but.

But that’s just it. What if Dan’s just been deluding himself all these years, and the reality of the situation is that he’s actually just been gay the whole time? What if his crush on Jennifer Lawrence, and his occasionally desire to look at boobs has nothing to do with his sexuality, and everything to do with some secret, closeted homophobic part of himself that’s too afraid to admit that he’s just _gay_.

What if bisexuality really doesn’t exist, and it’s just a bunch of people too afraid to just _pick one_?

The thoughts are so overwhelming that Dan heads inside and up to his old bedroom turned work-out room, and pulls out his cell phone to ring Phil.

He has no idea what time it is in Florida, has no idea what he might be interrupting, but he doesn’t _care_. He just needs to hear the sound of his boyfriend’s voice, someone to make his head stop spinning with all these _thoughts_ that have plagued him for years. He just need’s someone to remind him he’s okay and that nothing is wrong with him, because without, Dan’s afraid he just might go crazy.

Phil answers on the third ring, and his voice is so soft and crackly that Dan fears he woke him up.

“Dan?”

“Phil,” Dan gasps in response, crumpling into himself and finding a soft place on the ground to sit and lean against the wall. He drags his knees up to his chest, and just tries to _breathe_.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Phil asks, his voice sounding more and more worried with the passing moments. “Has something happened?”

Dan decides he’s not going to tell him. He can’t, not right now. Maybe later, when they’re together, when Phil can piece him back together properly again.

“I miss you,” he says instead, and coughs out a little laugh.

Phil makes a little distressed whining noise, his fingers clacking against the phone speaker like he’s trying to get the object closer to him.

“I miss you, too,” he whispers back. “Baby, tell me what’s wrong. Did something happen?”

It hurts that Phil knows him so well, hurts because Dan doesn’t want to hurt him, doesn’t want to poison him with the worst of his thoughts, but he knows that he has too. Eventually, at least, only he wishes he could do it back home.

A little crushed sound leaves Dan, and he sighs, resting his forehead against his knees and allowing his fingers to play with a loose thread on his jeans.

“How’s Florida?” he asks, because he can’t. Not now. Not just yet.

Phil seems to understand, because instead of pushing any further, he just kind of… talks. His voice is still all gravely like Dan’s just woken him up, and it’s probably late there, or very, very early, but Phil doesn’t hang up on him. Phil stays with him on the phone for a long time, sharing silly stories with Dan about his family and what they’re up to, how he nearly got attacked by a squirrel, and how he beat his brother at a game of monopoly which resulted in Martyn tossing a hotel piece at his forehead, and that it had reminded Phil of Dan.

It makes Dan laugh so much, that he starts to sob, and when he starts to sob, Phil makes another distressed noise that sounds so hurt, Dan wants to just launch himself into Phil’s arms.

“I miss you,” Dan says again, because he can’t – he _can’t_ –

“I miss you too, love. I wish I was there. I wish I – I wish I could make it _better_.” Phil’s voice cracks, and it’s enough. It’s enough. It’s _everything_ , because Dan can still hear the last time they’d had this conversation and how Phil had promised Dan that his love for his ex-girlfriend was just as real as his love for Phil is now. They aren’t talking about love, or sexuality, or anything of the sort, but it’s the way Phil’s voice cracks like he just _knows_ what’s wrong that really helps Dan.

“I know,” Dan whispers back, and let’s himself cry, because Phil will always be there for him. “It’s just – it’s just – my hair is wavy right now, and it’s so _annoying_ , Phil, you don’t understand,” he whines, trying to make a joke, trying to make Phil _understand_.

As always, Phil does.

“It just doesn’t want to be straight, Dan. Just like you.”

**

It starts to become easier, after that. Dan starts making the jokes more often, less to reassure Phil that Dan doesn’t mean anything by it when he tells their audience he’s _not gay_ , and more to reassure himself that he’s normal, he’s _fine_ , by joking that his curls are trying to escape so the world will see the true him. He’s not ready, though, not really. All joking aside, Dan’s not ready to come out, doesn’t think he ever will be, so he does the next best thing.

He’s tried of hiding. Phil is too, it turns out. They don’t want to be those two internet icons pretending to be something they aren’t, anymore, but they also don’t want to be these two internet icons who are best known for the moment they “came out” either, so they do things their own way.

They start censoring themselves less, using vague pronouns, and joking about celebrity crushes that are far less than _just_ straight, but far more than _just_ gay either. They keep trying to lay down hints, make it clear what they are, and eventually, eventually, they decide they’ll move onto their own relationship as well.

In 2016, they go on tour. It’s international, or as international as they can manage to make it, stretching from Britain, to the entirety of the United States, and then to Australia, with the hope for a little bit more along the way.

There are more eyes on them, now, more people watching, a whole team of them as well as a camera crew in multiple locations, all viewing them and their relationship in an entirely different light to what they’re used to – live.

It’s… terrifying. Dan has never been so terrified in his entire life; not even after Rico kissed him in his final year at school, not even when he’d been flirting with _the_ AmazingPhil over Dailybooth, and Skype, Snapchat and DM. Nothing has ever terrified Dan as much as letting the world so far _in_ that the only barrier he even has left are the straighteners he takes to his hair every day.

Well, it’s more than that, but Dan’s hair has long been the perfect analogy, perfect inside joke, for him to hide behind when it comes to facing his own sexuality. It’s still a sore subject, still a little bit terrifying, but he’s _getting_ there, and that’s what matters the most.

He decides that _this_ is the year, though, decides that this is the time to let himself go, and so… Dan starts putting down the hair straighteners.

It’s a slow process, as coming to terms with who he was in the first place was. It starts with a late start in America, where Dan fails to wake up in time to get ready properly, and Phil ushers him out of the tour bus so fast that Dan actually _forgets_ that his hair is naturally curly. It doesn’t occur to him until much later, just before the meet and greet, and he turns to Phil with wide, terrified eyes as he reaches up and presses his fingers against the curly mess he calls his “hobbit hair.”

Phil looks at him in turn, not understanding for a moment what’s _wrong_ when it’s been long said that Phil loves Dan’s hair like this, but then he seems to register what’s actually wrong, and he nudges at Dan with his hip. “You look fine. Besides,” he says, leaning in close, “Your hair is clearly just tired of hiding.”

The joke makes Dan laugh, clean and easy, and the pressure that had quickly been mounting in his chest seems to dissipate just like that. He shoves at Phil, rolls his eyes, and teases him mercilessly for the cheesy joke, but they both know it’s exactly what Dan had needed.

It happens again, much later, in October when they’re back home. There’s been a few hit and misses when it comes to Dan trying to lesson his absolute dependency on hair straighteners, but today is a good day. They woke up that morning to slow, sleepy morning sex – the best kind of sex, in Dan’s opinion – and Phil had said something about how beautiful Dan was in this natural state, completely naked under Phil with his hair piled up all curly on top of his head, freshly cut and neat despite Phil having just run his fingers through it.

The words rush through Dan’s mind until he can’t help himself, and he nudges at Phil, says, “So you like it better when I’m not trying to hide myself, then?” to which Phil easily replies, “Have I not made that clear enough to you, yet?”

Dan laughs, shoves him over, and sits on top of his boyfriend, leaning in to kiss him, deep and slow.

“I thought you wanted to keep me all to yourself, though?” he whispers afterwards, breath puffing against Phil’s lips.

Phil smirks underneath him, reaches up and cups at his hips. His fingers are slow and soothing there, a warm pressure against bare skin. He nudges at Dan a little, rubs their noses together, and smiles at him, all soft and sweet.

“I always want to keep you all to myself, but just like your hair, you’re always bursting to get out. And how could I dare to try and hide a light as beautiful as yours?” Phil asks, only to kiss him once again. Dan’s too busy laughing because his boyfriend’s a terribly cheesy _mess_ and ruins the kiss, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Later, Dan gets dressed to go out, but stops in front of the mirror. He can just about see Phil’s love bites left on his neck under the collar of his sweatshirt, and his hair is all neatly combed, despite still being curly, left natural just for Phil. Dan reaches up to touch his fingers to the soft curls, stops, laughs.

He snaps a picture that he uploads to twitter, and he just about captions it _“my natural hair doesn’t want to be any more straight than me_ ,” but he changes his mind half way through, and writes “ _my hair doesn’t look too wild natural atm when it’s shorter should I leave it like this?”_ instead. He’s not quite ready for that step yet.

**

“My hair doesn’t want to be straight, inside joke,” Dan comments loftily in the middle of his liveshow, pushing forwards like it never even happened in the first place because he doesn’t even know where the words came from. It hadn’t been intentional, that’s for sure – or at least, it hadn’t been _scripted_ or _planned_ because this was a live show, but he hadn’t known the words were going to come out until they had.

He’s gotten better about recovery, though, and he thinks he does a pretty good job of covering up his own surprise at the words. It doesn’t really  help that this whole liveshow has been a little bit of a mess in terms of Dan being just a tad too real, though, so he moves on as if it’s nothing at all.

He knows, later, the entire world is going to analyze it, and he wonders if it gets bad enough if he can just laugh it off and claim he said “insert joke,” instead, but for now, he leaves well enough alone.

It’s 2017, and Dan is tired of his hair being an inside joke. Dan is tired of being ashamed of his own sexuality.

So maybe he really will wear it curly a little more often now. The world will just have to wait and see.


End file.
